


It's Only Forever

by Frayach



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M, New York City, Post Season/Series 05, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-13
Updated: 2012-10-13
Packaged: 2017-11-16 04:59:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frayach/pseuds/Frayach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brian has lived his life without making promises he knows he might not be able to keep.</p><p> </p><p>  <img/></p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Only Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Lj version [HERE](http://frayach.livejournal.com/113716.html).

It happened so fast. He only had an instant – not enough time for fear or pain – but time enough for realization. And a kind of relief. No promises left behind in a car crumbled like a discarded Kleenex. No regrets scattered about like the crumbs of glass reflecting the flashing lights. There’d be grief, but not the kind of grief that flows from a spring of deeds left undone – of words left unsaid. There were no loose ends. He’d lived his whole life to insure there wouldn’t be.

 

It was okay. He’d made no vows he hadn’t kept. It was okay.

 

The morning of the day Brian Kinney died was November-cold. Wet and gusty under a sullen sky. He and Justin lay in bed longer than they usually did, touching each other lazily and laughing at stupid stuff, most of it regarding their mutual Pittsburgh friends. He’d arrived late in the afternoon the day before. There’d been work shit Ted didn’t have the authority to deal with, and he hadn’t been able to leave till noon. The GPS says it’s a seven-hour drive, but he’d driven the distant between Pittsburgh and New York City so often that he could do it comfortably within five and a half. The stretch between the Hutchinson Turnpike and Harrisburg went through the Roaring Run Watershed, and depending on the time of day, you could drive for miles without passing anything but deer grazing too close to the shoulder. It was a rare trip when at least one didn’t leap out into the road just as he was passing. He’d hit one last summer around 10 p.m. and arrived at his and Justin’s building with blood and hair on his bumper and shaking hands that required a joint to steady. It’d been a buck. The last thing he remembered before the impact was the rack of antlers, bone-white in his high beams and eyes staring death in the face – unblinking and proud. Stupid fucker.

 

 _You drive too fast_ Justin had said matter-of-factly when Brian accepted the glass of wine Justin gave him. Justin always said _something_ when Brian drove – he much preferred it when Brian flew. In fall and spring, Justin reminded him of fog and how even a little can seriously impact visibility and thus reaction time (a second for every ten feet). In the summer, he warned of slow-moving Winnebagos, and in the winter, it was all about black ice and bridges freezing before the roads. Brian would roll his eyes, but he knew it was one of the ways Justin said “I love you” without actually having to say it and risk incurring a snide retort.

 

“What are we going to do today?” Justin asked, his chin resting on Brian’s hipbone, his mouth swollen from sucking leisurely on Brian’s cock. His eyes were heavy with sleep and contentment.

 

Brian reached down and combed his fingers through Justin’s hair. The truth was he didn’t want to do anything except drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, read the Sunday _Times_ , and fuck, of course. As many times as possible.

 

“Hopefully nothing that involves leaving the apartment,” he replied. When Justin continued looking at him without answering, he added, “Please don’t tell me we have to go to another one of your artsy little friends’ pathetic exhibits in yet another badly renovated factory building.”

 

“None of my ‘artsy little friends’ has an exhibit at the moment,” Justin replied. “But Chelsea has a recital.”

 

“Yippee. Which one is she again? The one with the purple hair or the pierced clit?”

 

“It’s maroon, not purple, and how do you know Becca has a pierced clit?”

 

Brian took Justin’s hand and pulled him up to lie beside him. “Because she volunteered the information the night we went to that ridiculous place with the hookahs and those stupid throw cushions. For some unfathomable reason, she thought I might be interested in seeing it.”

 

“I’m sure you quickly disabused her of the notion,” Justin said. He cupped Brian’s cheek and kissed him. Brian could taste his come on Justin’s tongue. As with so many other things, Justin was the only one he ever let kiss him after a blow-job. Not that he kissed other guys much anymore, a fact he’d never tell anyone – especially Justin. Justin had lived in New York long enough that the initial thrill of the City That Never Sleeps had worn off. It would be too easy for him to move back to Pittsburgh if he thought Brian had stopped fucking around; something Brian would only allow over his dead body. So he lied . . . or more accurately omitted the truth – namely, that he only rarely went to the baths anymore and never, ever, took a guy back to the loft. He hadn’t since the night Justin left, but he’d be damned before Justin found out. He’d sworn Mikey and Emmett and Theodore to secrecy on penalty of being banned from Babylon for life. Not that Mikey would mind, but that was a whole other story that he chose not to think about when he was with Justin.

 

Christ, it hadn’t been easy at first. The broken engagement lingered in every familiar place and behind every whisper. _Brian Kinney dumped at the altar_. By unspoken agreement, he and Justin had virtually no contact for the first several months after Justin left save a few drunk dials and weekly emails in which they informed each other they were doing “great” even though both knew that “okay” was the truthful answer. And he _had_ been okay for the most part despite having to spend way too much time at the Professor and Mrs. Bruckner residence because the hours between leaving the office and going to Babylon were just too fucking lonely. It was in the evening when Justin would’ve been making dinner that was the worst time of the day – the time when missing him brushed up against unbearable.

 

But then Justin had visited his mother over Christmas and showed up at Babylon on New Year’s Eve without so much as a heads-up, his shirt tit-tight and his hair New York-tousled. He hadn’t bothered to say hello; he’d merely hooked a finger in one of Brian’s belt loops and tugged hard until their bodies pressed together seamlessly. After that, Brian bought the apartment, returning Justin’s gesture and not giving a hint beforehand. He’d just done it and refused to listen when Justin protested that the Alphabet City dump he “lived in” was “just fine.” “Just fine,” by its very definition, did not encompass peeling lead paint and, God forbid, no closet space.

 

Justin’s new home and Brian’s weekend get-away was on the Upper Westside just off of Morningside. It was close enough to Harlem to be “cool” to Justin’s artsy friends and halfway between the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel, so Brian had two routes to choose from if there was a back-up at either. Plus they had a view of Morningside Park from the living room as well as a glimpse of the Hudson from the rooftop garden. A sound investment now that the queers were gentrifying the former crack houses on West 120th Street and turning the pawn shops on Lenox Avenue into pretentious cafes. When Justin finally came to his senses and they moved to a loft in Tribeca, he’d be able to sell the apartment for at least twice what he’d paid for it even though he’d bought it at the height of the housing bubble (a decision Ted thought was insane, but then if Ted thought something was insane, then by definition it had to be a good thing).

 

After he bought the apartment, he and Justin didn’t see each other every weekend but they started calling each other everyday – mostly about stupid shit they wanted to bitch about. It wasn’t marriage and a house in the country, but it was enough. Maybe someday things would be different, but they didn’t need to talk about it. When the day came, it would just happen on its own. Brian was sure of it.

 

Justin took Brian’s hand and twirled the ring on his finger as though it was the volume knob on a stereo. It was a gesture not only of affection but a kind of apology for not wearing his. Not that he needed to apologize. Brian preferred it this way. When he’d set Justin free, he’d let go of any expectations he might’ve been in the process of forming. It’d been the right thing to do, but he, himself, had needed _something_ that only wearing his wedding ring could satisfied. He hadn’t thought about what that something might be. He didn’t need to. He only knew what he wanted, and true to his nature he did it. It was that simple. When a man was on his knees sucking his cock, Brian liked to watch his hand on the top of the man's head and the platinum band gleaming in the near-dark of Babylon’s VIP lounge.

 

“We could take a walk in Central Park,” Justin said, stretching like a cat against the length of Brian’s body.

 

Brian reached for the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. “And freeze our asses off? Sounds like fun.” He held the lighter’s flame to the tip of his cigarette and took a deep drag.

 

“Then how about we go out to eat somewhere? There’s a new hotel a couple blocks away that has a brunch menu. I stopped in to take a look at it the other day. It’s pretty extensive.”

 

Brian turned his face away and exhaled. “The more extensive the menu, the shittier the food,” he said, handing the cigarette to Justin. “Quantity rarely means quality.”

 

Justin took a drag and gave it back. “Okay, then how about we see a movie. Shaun said there was a good one playing at the Angelika Film Center.”

 

“Since when did you start liking art house films?”

 

“Since I started hanging out with sophisticated people.”

 

Brian laughed and took another drag on his cigarette. “Are these the same ‘sophisticated people’ who eat Kraft macaroni and cheese with ketchup from a dented pot because balanced meals on plates are too bourgeois and think decorating their walls with posters of Che Guevara make them Marxist revolutionaries? Come now, Sunshine. If you’re going to cave into peer pressure then at least choose a peer group that appreciates the finer things in life. A man cannot live on Raman Noodles alone. Especially not a self-respecting fag.”

 

Justin reached for the cigarette again and then handed it back to Brian to stub out in the ashtray. “I’m running out of ideas,” he said, sounding disgruntled in a perfunctory sort of way that meant he really didn’t give a shit what they did.

 

“Good. That was my intent,” Brian replied. He reached down and wrapped his fingers around Justin’s still-interested cock.

 

These days they made love as often as they fucked. Although he’d never admit it – and Justin loved it too much to rib him about it – he was fine with the situation. It felt as exotic as fucking must feel to other couples who’d been together as long as they had. Going slowly meant enjoying the incremental building of tension, of arousal blossoming into excitement. He loved the way Justin’s toes curled and his hands tightened into fists, clutching the sheet beneath him. Climax approached slowly, growing larger and more distinct on the horizon of sensation with every heaving full-body thrust. When it finally hit, the surrender was more complete than any he experienced when he fucked a stranger. He was helpless for a moment. It was the most wonderful – the most perfect – feeling he’d ever known.

 

Justin had already come, and lay panting and boneless beneath Brian’s full weight of release. Brian buried his face between Justin’s head and shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of his warm sweat-damp skin. He rarely fucked other guys these days, preferring the fleeting anonymity of a blow-job, but when he did, he always breathed through his mouth. The foreign scent of a stranger’s arousal was distasteful – a surefire dick-shrinker. Like all his other senses, his sense of smell only responded to Justin. It was a revelation when Brian had realized he was perfectly fine with that.

 

“Shit, you’re fucking heavy,” Justin said, his lips moving against Brian’s cheek. “Have you been eating carbs after seven?”

 

Brian ignored him and rolled onto his back. The only sounds in the quiet were their deepening breaths and the distant hum of traffic on the Hudson Parkway. Brian reached down and scratched his groin. He could go back to sleep, but he didn’t want to. Thanks to Leo Brown, their weekend had been shortened from Friday evening through Sunday to little more than twenty-four hours. He wouldn’t waste additional time.

 

Justin rolled onto his side and traced a finger around each of Brian’s nipples and then followed the line of dark hair from his bellybutton to the base of his cock.

 

“I bought pastries,” he said.

 

“Wonderful. Nothing like sugar and starch to start the day.”

 

“They’re raspberry,” Justin replied as though having raspberry jam filling magically transformed the pastries into a daily serving of fruits and vegetables. “And it’s noon.”

 

“Still the start of the day,” Brian replied. He caught Justin’s hand and lifted it to kiss his palm. “At least my day, and, really, that’s all that matters.”

 

Justin grinned. “Ah, yes, I’m on Brian Kinney time. How could I forget?”

 

“The normal rules of physics do not apply.” He nipped the heel of Justin’s hand and then pulled him down into a kiss.

 

He’d be hard pressed to say what part of Justin he loved most. Of course there were his cock and his ass (oh dear God, thank you for Justin Taylor’s ass), but then there were his lips and the sensitive spots behind his elbows and knees. But if asked at gunpoint, he’d say Justin’s hands – especially when there was dried paint on them. He could tell from the crescents of Justin’s fingertips that he was still fascinated by every shade of blue as though he was clinging to a summer sky despite the approaching winter.

 

Justin didn’t go Pittsburgh anymore, and so he didn’t know Brian’s loft was full of the paintings purchased by Justin’s “anonymous, but obviously wealthy, admirer” – instead Justin’s mom and sister came to see him in New York as did Emmett and Ted on occasion. Mikey and the professor made noises about visiting but they’d only made it a couple times over the nearly five years Justin had been living on Morningside Avenue (obviously his dump in Alphabet City hadn’t exactly been a siren’s call – except to Emmett who loved to buy crap at the over-priced consignment shops). Debbie and Carl visited as often as their schedules let them. The only people Justin hadn’t seen since he’d moved were Lindsay and Melanie – and Gus, of course – although he constantly peppered Brian with questions about them, often embarrassing Brian because he didn’t know the answers. He tried to get to Toronto as often as possible, but Melanie didn’t make it easy and, worst of all, Gus clung and cried when he left. He’d get back to Pittsburgh feeling guilty and exhausted and missing Justin like crazy. Those were the only times he drank enough to pass out – the only times he wondered why the fuck he’d let _both_ his son and his lover leave him. The only times he wondered whether his relinquishment flowed from fear rather than love.

 

“So, how about those pastries and some coffee. I got the kind you like, and it's whole bean. I could run out for a _New York Times_ . . .”

 

“How about ‘none of the above.’” Brian tugged Justin’s hand until Justin lay sprawled on top of him.

 

“You’re not hungry then?”

 

“Not for pastries.”

 

Justin pressed his lips against Brian’s with a lascivious purr – if such a sound existed. “You’re insatiable today.”

 

“Why should today be different from any other?” He ran his palms from Justin’s shoulders down to his tailbone where his back curved into the swell of his ass. “I have an idea. Why don’t we go to your studio? You have a coffee maker there, right? We’ll pick up bagels on the way.” He kissed Justin slowly and then pushed himself up. Justin rose to his hands and knees to accommodate Brian’s position and arousal twisted in Brian’s belly. He must’ve made some kind of sound because Justin dropped his head and laughed when he saw Brian’s hardening dick.

 

“I could ride you,” he said, settling his ass on Brian’s lap until his cheeks cradled Brian’s cock.

 

“Later,” Brian said. He reached around Justin’s waist and pinched his ass.

 

“Ow! Bastard!”

 

They wrestled in the sheets for a moment before Brian got out of bed and danced away from Justin’s grasping hand. He picked up a pair of jeans from the floor and tossed them at Justin. “Get up,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

 

“For someone who didn’t even want to get out of bed a moment ago, you’re pretty pushy.”

 

“Hadn’t thought of a reason to get up. Now I have. I want to go to your studio.”

 

Justin pulled on his jeans without bothering with underwear.

 

“You’re going to get your dick stuck in your zipper one of these days.”

 

“Well, you’re going to freeze your ass off,” Justin replied. “There’s no heat in the studio. I have to thaw out my hands with a space heater – one of the models that got recalled a couple years ago because they catch fire.”

 

Brian rolled his eyes and turned to walk to the bathroom. This particular conversation bored him to the edge of endurance. It always went the same:

 

 _The place has no insulation. The bill would be through the roof if I used the heating system/air conditioner, plus the guy who owns the building is too much of a prick to have it insulated_.

 

 _You don’t have to freeze/swelter. I said I’d pay for heating/cooling. It’s not like I can’t afford it_.

 

 _You already bought the apartment_.

 

 _And you pay me rent – granted not very much but enough to buy groceries_.

 

 _Asshole. I pay you more than that_.

 

_I like to buy vegetables that aren’t canned or frozen._

 

 _Ha ha. But I’m serious, Brian. I do make money off my art, you know. I’m not destitute_.

 

 _Last I knew good brushes and paint and frames aren’t cheap. Painting is your calling, but it also needs to be your business. You put the proceeds toward the stuff you need to be the best painter you can be and let me pay for the fucking heat/air conditioning_.

 

 _No, Brian. I’m serious_.

 

_And so am I. Why do you have to be such a twat about things?_

 

 _Let’s just say that if I’m a twat, then I learned from the master of twatosity_.

 

Blah blah blah blah blah and so on and so forth. But he knew when to stop pressing his case. If they ever broke up, it would be over money. Long ago, he’d come to think of his money as both of theirs, but Justin never had – and probably never would. It was frustrating as hell, but at the end of the day, Brian knew Justin’s stubborn independence was one of the things he loved about him. The only thing he was adamant about was that Justin never let a lack of money get in the way of his dreams. Brian had many reasons to buy Justin’s paintings, not least because they were fucking fantastic, but also because it was the only way he could help Justin out without hurting his pride. Every one of their friends owned an original Justin Taylor, and if he bought any more for the office there wouldn’t be room to showcase his ads. The only nightmare he had now and then (other than the usual hair-loss and flabby-abs dreams) was Justin coming to Pittsburgh unannounced. Their relationship could survive semi-monogamy and distance, but Brian wasn’t sure it could survive Justin’s realization that Brian was his best customer.

 

Christ, but Justin was right. His studio was fucking freezing. Despite Brian’s trepidation, he let Justin turn on the electric heater, which – even when turned up high – hardly made a dent in the temperature. Justin blew into his cupped hands as he made coffee while Brian walked around, his gloved hands behind his back.

 

Yes, he was biased, but he was also Brian Kinney. He knew what something was worth like he knew every inch of Liberty Ave, and Justin’s paintings were worth a hell of a lot more money than what Justin was suggesting to the galleries. He stopped in front of a large canvass and saw his own eyes looking back at him as part of a complicated collage of images. Is that how people saw them? His eyes, as Justin had depicted them, said more than any of the words Brian had ever said in his life combined. The thought was both alarming and comforting at the same time. He turned to look at Justin, who was cutting the bagels with a plastic knife.

 

“What are you asking for this one?” he said with a perfected nonchalance that bordered on indolence.

 

Justin looked up and blinked guiltily as though Brian had just found a stash of crack and Hustler magazines.

 

“Um,” he said haltingly. “Oh, that. Actually it’s not finished.”

 

“But when it is, what are you going to ask for it?”

 

Justin shrugged and turned back to the bagels. “Haven’t decided yet,” he mumbled, and that’s when Brian realized that it wasn’t for sell – and never would be. He looked away and hid a smile.

 

“Well, when you do, let me know. I think it would look great in our living room.”

 

Justin didn’t glance up, but he did laugh. “Arrogant son of bitch,” he said. “Cream cheese or butter?”

 

“Cream cheese, but only a little. I only had time to go to the gym twice last week. If I’m not careful I’m going to asking for a referral for a cosmetic surgeon from Theodore, which, it goes without saying, would be a definite low point in my life.” He threw aside a sheet protecting a suspicious looking couch from paint smears and splatters. Justin came over and handed him half a bagel on a napkin and mug of coffee. Brian took a sip. Black and sweet. Just how he liked it. 

 

Justin sat down beside him and the couch dipped ominously. He nodded at the painting.

 

“It wanted to be painted,” he said, blushing defiantly in anticipation of Brian’s inevitable dismissive remark.

 

“What? Did the canvass whisper to you? ‘Come here, sunshine, you know you want to slather me in paint,’” Brian said, his voice dropping into a sultry growl.

 

“No,” Justin replied, shoving him away with his elbow and scrunching his face when Brian leaned over to kiss him. “It just . . . you wouldn’t understand.”

 

Brian would’ve challenged him further, but there was something in Justin’s voice – and something in the eyes he’d painted – that told him now was not the time for teasing.

 

Instead he said, “They look like I’m watching you.”

 

Justin turned to look at him with that expression he got sometimes when he was pleading wordlessly for Brian to cut the bull shit.

 

“They are,” he said. “Just in case . . . In case . . .”

 

“In case what?”

 

Justin shrugged and looked away again. “Nothing lasts forever,” he said quietly before lifting his mug and taking a sip of coffee.

 

Brian frowned and touched his chin, turning Justin’s gaze back onto him. “We will,” he said, remembering snow falling and rings not returned to the jeweler. He leaned forward and kissed him and then took the mug from Justin’s hands and set it on the floor. He heard a small hungry sound and then realized with surprise that he’d been the one who made it. Justin reached for his belt buckle as he dove forward for another kiss.

 

There was nothing slow or gentle this time, and the couch gave up the ghost halfway through, forcing them to fuck on the paint-splattered floor. Brian gripped Justin’s hips bruisingly as Justin rode him hard, his chest flushed with exertion and arousal and his hand pumping his dick.

 

“There’s paint in your hair,” Justin gasped.

 

Brian laughed breathlessly. “I don’t give a shit as long as it isn’t grey.”

 

“It’s . . . it’s blue,” Justin stammered; he was clearly on the edge of losing it – along with his grasp on the English language. He squeezed his eyes shut, and his hand froze. He came silently like he always did, but like _he_ always did, Brian made up for it with a shout of release. Justin collapsed on top of him.

 

“Let me paint you,” he said. 

 

Brian pushed him up so that Justin could see his arched eyebrow. Justin ran his fingers through his hair and smiled at him.

 

“Blue suits you,” he said.

 

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the studio. Brian had gone out to buy the _Times_ and some Thai peanut soup that they ate from their coffee mugs. He read while Justin painted. Every once in a while, he looked up to find Justin studying him with an artist’s gaze. It was as intimate as a lover’s, and to Brian’s irritation, he found himself blushing. Blushing, for fuck sake! Outside the drizzle turned to freezing rain. Justin turned to look out the window.

 

“You can’t go back,” he said, and Brian’s heart stopped for the moment it took him to realize Justin merely meant that night, not forever.

 

He took a deep breath and turned back to the Style section. “Got to. Meeting with the marketing exec for Abercrombie & Fitch first thing in the morning,” he said in his most bored sounding voice. He could feel Justin’s inevitable lecture gathering like a storm cloud.

 

“You can’t drive to Pittsburgh in an ice storm.”

 

Brian smiled but didn’t look up from his paper. He loved that Justin no longer referred to Pittsburgh as Brian’s “home.” His home was wherever Justin was, and Justin was in New York, not western Pennslyvania.

 

“Just got new tires.”

 

“I’ve read that even the best winter tires are useless on black ice.”

 

“Then there’d better not be any black ice.”

 

“Brian.”

 

He lifted his head and fixed Justin with an eloquently dispassionate gaze. “Justin.”

 

“Can’t you fly? You can come get your car next weekend. You can live a few days without it.”

 

Brian raised both eyebrows in his “this conversation is over” expression and went back to reading his paper.

 

“I hate when you do this,” Justin muttered.

 

“What am I doing?”

 

“You know.”

 

Brian sighed and looked up. “Being stubborn? Being a prick? Being the man you know and love?” he added teasingly.

 

“Pretty much covers it,” Justin groused.

 

Brian folded his paper and tossed it on the floor. Justin glowered at his canvass as Brian walked over and rested his chin on his shoulder.

 

“Fuck off,” he said as Brian began kissing the back of his neck.

 

“That doesn’t look like me,” Brian said pointing at the canvass.

 

“It will,” Justin said and then added “they always do.”

 

Having bought several portraits of himself, Brian knew he spoke the truth. He nipped Justin’s ear.

 

“Tell you what,” he said magnanimously. “I’ll leave early. Before the road has time to freeze.”

 

“Bridges freeze before roads,” Justin said dejectedly. He knew when a conversation was over.

 

“Then I’ll slow down on the bridges. Come on, let me take you home.”

 

Justin turned with surprising swiftness and threw his arms around Brian’s neck. “I love you,” he said angrily, but he made no move to put on his coat or that ridiculous shapeless hat Daphne had made him.

 

“Staying here, then?” Brian said against Justin's mouth. “Don’t burn down the place.” He cast a suspicious glance at the space heater, which had been emitting sparks now and then in a way Brian was pretty sure could result in a law suit. He stroked Justin’s hair.

 

“I want to finish this,” Justin replied, kissing Brian’s throat. “Plus, if you’re going to be an asshole and drive back tonight, then I want to be busy until I get the call that you’re safe and snug in the loft.” 

 

Brian hummed against Justin’s mouth. “Safe perhaps, but not snug.”

 

“Well, safe will do. Brian?”

 

He looked down, his eyebrow arched with the unspoken question. But Justin didn’t reply. He merely stood still and quiet, looking deep into Brian’s eyes.

 

“Next weekend?” he finally asked in a voice that was almost a whisper.

 

Brian kissed him quiet. They went through this same thing every time.

 

“You don’t know that,” he said firmly but gently. “And it doesn’t matter.”

 

It’d been a long time since a good-bye felt like it might mean forever, but that didn’t make parting easier. Forever and never were both sides of the same coin – a coin flipped and then called. Heads or tails. He and Mikey used to spend the boredom-filled hours of their adolescence flipping coins, and just like their science book said, it was always more or less equal: Heads forty-one times, tails forty-nine. Tails fifty-three, heads forty-seven.

 

“Just be careful,” Justin said, his hands already on Brian’s shoulders, pushing him away in a familiar gesture that meant _just go before it starts to hurt_.

 

“As careful as I can be,” Brian replied. It was all he had to offer. All he’d ever had – and ever would.

 

Justin looked into his eyes for a long time and then nodded as though he’d just made a momentous decision. “Okay,” he said. “Just remember . . .”

 

“Bridges freeze before roads . . .”

 

Justin’s farewell smile spread into a grin. “That wasn’t what I was going to say,” he said.

 

Brian raised both eyebrows and waited.

 

“I was going to say ‘just remember I love you.’” He stood on his toes and kissed Brian softly on the mouth. If someone had asked him when he was twenty-nine if he’d ever kiss a man just for the sake of a kiss, Brian would’ve laughed in their face. But he wasn’t twenty-nine anymore. And that was okay. He smiled against Justin’s lips.

 

“Call,” Justin said.

 

“If I can,” Brian replied, touching the side of Justin’s face with a kind of reverence he’d never known before he fell in love. “If I can,” he repeated, just in case he couldn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm new to QaF and looking for people to obsess with me over at my new obsession. Join me at my new [ all Qaf all the time](http://queerasfray.livejournal.com/) journal.


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